Farming the Woods

Ken Mudge & Steve Gabriel

$39.95

Beginner

Intermediate

Garden

Small Farm

With information on mushrooms, sugaring, ginseng, fruit and nut trees, forest farming in a changing climate, and more...

Learn how to fill forests with food by viewing agriculture from a remarkably different perspective: that a healthy forest can be maintained while growing a wide range of food, medicinal, and other non-timber products.

The practices of forestry and farming are often seen as mutually exclusive, because in the modern world, agriculture involves open fields, straight rows, and machinery to grow crops, while forests are reserved primarily for timber and firewood harvesting.

In Farming the Woods, authors Ken Mudge and Steve Gabriel demonstrate that it doesn’t have to be an either-or scenario, but a complementary one; forest farms can be most productive in places where the plow is not: on steep slopes and in shallow soils. Forest farming is an invaluable practice to integrate into any farm or homestead, especially as the need for unique value-added products and supplemental income becomes increasingly important for farmers.

Many of the daily indulgences we take for granted, such as coffee, chocolate, and many tropical fruits, all originate in forest ecosystems. But few know that such abundance is also available in the cool temperate forests of North America.

Farming the Woods covers in detail how to cultivate, harvest, and market high-value non-timber forest crops such as American ginseng, shiitake mushrooms, ramps (wild leeks), maple syrup, fruit and nut trees, ornamentals, and more. Along with profiles of forest farmers from around the country, readers are also provided comprehensive information on:

historical perspectives of forest farming

mimicking the forest in a changing climate

cultivation of medicinal crops

cultivation of food crops

creating a forest nursery

harvesting and utilizing wood products

the role of animals in the forest farm

how to design your forest farm and manage it once it’s established.

Farming the Woods is an essential book for farmers and gardeners who have access to an established woodland, are looking for productive ways to manage it, and are interested in incorporating aspects of agroforestry, permaculture, forest gardening, and sustainable woodlot management into the concept of a whole-farm organism.

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In this breakthrough work — now available in English for the first time — the independent German-Norwegian explorer of soil life, graduate permaculture designer and graduate engineer Herwig Pommeresche shares his lifetime of research into humus.

#7488 • Copyright 2018 • Softcover • 264 pages

Acres U.S.A. is North America's oldest publisher on production-scale organic and sustainable farming. For more than four decades our mission has been to help farmers, ranchers and market gardeners grow food organically, sustainably, without harmful, toxic chemistry.